Which major U.S. cities saw the largest year-over-year increase or decrease in homicide rates between 2024 and 2025?
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Executive summary
Available multi-city data for 2025 point to broad, sometimes sharp, declines in homicides across many major U.S. cities — the Council on Criminal Justice reports an average 17% drop in homicide rates in the first half of 2025 compared with the first half of 2024 across 30 cities [1] — while a few isolated places bucked the trend or showed longer-term increases, with one secondary source flagging Phoenix as an outlier [2]. The evidence does not support a single definitive, nation‑wide ranking of year‑over‑year city-by-city changes from full-year 2024 to full-year 2025 because most outlets publish partial or mid‑year updates and municipal reporting remains uneven; the analysis below therefore highlights the largest reported declines and the few noted increases while flagging source limits.
1. Biggest reported declines — Denver and a broad pattern of falling homicides
Multiple compilations focusing on early‑2025 data credit several cities with large year‑over‑year drops; an industry summary claims Denver achieved a roughly 45% reduction in homicides versus 2024, a striking single‑city swing if sustained [2], and the Council on Criminal Justice — which aggregates incident-level data from 30 cities — finds that homicides were 17% lower on average in the first half of 2025 than the same period in 2024, representing 327 fewer killings across reporting cities [1].
2. Notable mid‑year improvements — St. Louis as a prominent example
Local and compendium sources emphasize steep falls in traditionally high‑homicide cities: reporting assembled by SafeHome and other mid‑2025 summaries notes St. Louis saw homicides fall approximately 22% in the first half of 2025 compared with the same period a year earlier, a sizable improvement in a city that has frequently led national rankings [3].
3. Where increases were reported — Phoenix and the caveat about ‘long‑term’ trends
Of the secondary sources reviewed, one aggregator asserts that while most cities saw decreases in 2025, Phoenix remained a long‑term outlier showing increases since 2019 — that characterization implies Phoenix did not share in the broad 2024→2025 decline seen elsewhere, though the claim is framed as a long‑term trend rather than a strict single‑year 2024→2025 comparison [2]. The same source also reports that 18 of 20 cities it tracked experienced decreases in 2025, underscoring that increases were the exception [2].
4. Reasons, interpretations and competing narratives in the sources
Analysts cited by mainstream and policy outlets attribute the falls to a mix of factors — renewed policing strategies, community violence interventions, and year‑to‑year volatility — while cautioning that monthly or half‑year swings can overstate durable change [4] [1]. Some outlets emphasize local policy wins and rising clearance rates (for example, claims of improving clearance and cooperation in some municipalities) as explanatory narratives [3], whereas others warn that comparisons are sensitive to which set of cities is included and whether full‑year 2025 data are available [4] [2].
5. Data gaps and limits — why a definitive city‑by‑city 2024→2025 ranking is not possible from these sources
The sources reviewed mix full‑year 2024 tallies, mid‑year 2025 incident reporting, and post‑hoc aggregations; the Council on Criminal Justice’s mid‑year sample covers 30 cities and reports an average 17% decline through June 2025 [1], but many other compendia either lack complete 2025 year‑end data or use different city samples [5] [2] [4]. Because most datasets cited are partial (mid‑year or focused samples) and some summaries emphasize long‑term trends rather than strict 2024→2025 annual comparisons, it is not possible from the provided reporting to produce a fully sourced, authoritative ranked list of the single largest year‑over‑year increases or decreases between the calendar years 2024 and 2025 for all major U.S. cities.
6. Bottom line
Based on the best available reporting: the largest documented city declines in early 2025 include Denver (reported ~45% decline in one compilation) and St. Louis (~22% decline in the first half of 2025) and aggregate reporting shows an average 17% drop across 30 reporting cities [2] [3] [1]; documented single‑city increases in 2025 are far rarer in these sources, with Phoenix cited as a notable long‑term increase example though not every source reports a 2024→2025 single‑year rise [2]. Given the heterogeneity of data windows and city samples, a conclusive, fully comparable 2024→2025 city ranking requires municipal or FBI year‑end validated figures that are not uniformly available in the provided reporting.